Oregon Freed 13 Sex Offenders ICE Asked to Hold. A Judge Made Counties Help Hunt Them Down

ICE asked Oregon to hold them. Oregon let them go anyway. Now 14 illegal aliens with convictions for rape, child sexual abuse, robbery and kidnapping are back in federal custody, and the only reason the feds could find them is that a federal judge ordered four Oregon counties to say where they were.

U.S. Attorney Scott Bradford, the Trump administration's top federal prosecutor in Oregon, announced the arrests on Friday. "These violent offenders were released from Oregon prisons back into our communities, despite federal detainers being in place," he said in a video statement. "I sued four Oregon counties for information to find them, arrest them, and remove them from the United States."

Who they are

Bradford's office named all 14. Thirteen have sex-offense convictions. The list includes Hector Carmona Saldana of Mexico, convicted in 2017 of first-degree sexual abuse and using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct; Marco Antonio Joya-Santana, convicted in 2013 of three counts of third-degree rape and three of third-degree sodomy involving a minor under 16, then later of nine more counts of second-degree sexual abuse; and Francisco Orozco-Navarro of Mexico, convicted in 2016 of first-degree rape, unlawful sexual penetration, sexual abuse and domestic-violence assault.

The 14th, Adair Omar Ruiz-Hernandez of Mexico, was convicted in 2013 of first-degree robbery and first-degree kidnapping. Ten of the 14 are listed as citizens of Mexico, two of El Salvador and one of Micronesia; the release gives no country for Joya-Santana.

Look at the conviction dates: 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020. Some of these offenders were living free in Oregon for a decade after a court found them guilty, while an ICE detainer sat unanswered in a county file.

How sanctuary law kept them hidden

A detainer is a simple request. ICE asks a jail to hold someone briefly, or at least call, before releasing an alien it wants to deport. Oregon's sanctuary law, the country's first when it passed in 1987 and kept by voters who rejected a 2018 repeal, tells local police not to help with that.

So federal agents tried the next step: administrative subpoenas from Homeland Security Investigations, asking the counties where the offenders had gone. The Department of Homeland Security says Marion County, citing Oregon's sanctuary law, refused to answer one for Victor Soseia Hachipan, a Micronesian man with two convictions for second-degree sex abuse of a victim under 14. DHS says the county had ignored ICE's detainer on him after a 2021 conviction; he reoffended and was convicted of burglary in 2023, and the county released him again.

"After sanctuary politicians in the state of Oregon refused to honor an ICE detainer, as well as a subpoena, we finally arrested this illegal alien from Micronesia, a convicted sex offender, after obtaining a court order from a Federal Judge to enforce the subpoena," DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in an Oct. 15 statement. Agents picked up Hachipan in Keizer on Oct. 7.

The court fight

Bradford's office took Clackamas, Marion, Multnomah and Washington counties to federal court with two petitions, filed Oct. 1, 2025, and April 1, 2026, seeking help locating more than 40 violent offenders. The court granted them on Nov. 24, 2025, and June 5, 2026. According to the release, the court found that Oregon law "explicitly permits state law enforcement agencies to 'exchange information with a federal immigration authority.'"

In other words, the sanctuary law the counties hid behind never barred them from simply telling the feds where these offenders were. All four counties complied once ordered. Think of a landlord who won't give the fire marshal a key, claiming the lease forbids it, until a judge reads the lease and points to the line that says he can.

The timeline tells the story. Three arrests trickled in during the litigation. After the June 5 order, agents made 11 in about nine weeks, from Aug. 4 to Oct. 7.

What the coverage leaves out

Local TV framed the case as the feds "seeking Oregon jail records" and noted that county officials had not commented. Left out: the counties fought the information requests until a judge ruled, and the ruling said state law allowed the sharing all along.

The bigger hole is the math. The petitions sought more than 40 offenders. Fourteen are in custody "to date," the office says. It has not said how many of the rest are still at large in Oregon, have left the state or have already been removed.

What happens next

Bradford's office says it "will continue working closely with federal, state, and local partners" on information sharing. The 14 now face removal from the country. The court orders stand as a template: when a sanctuary county refuses an ICE subpoena, federal prosecutors can ask a judge to enforce it, and in Oregon, the court said yes twice.

"When offenders who have committed horrific crimes, many of them against children, are released into our communities despite federal detainers, the risk to public safety is indefensible," Bradford said in the release.